Bereans Corner
Bereans Corner
Thru the Bible - #105 - Leviticus 18 - Laws on Immoral Relations
Could the ancient laws of Leviticus 18 still hold meaning for us today? Prepare to be immersed in a profound discussion that bridges millennia, as we dissect the Old Testament's intricate laws on sexual morality. We journey through the chapter's three distinct segments, first adhering to God's call to obedience, then navigating the labyrinth of 18 sexual prohibitions, and finally confronting the dire repercussions of turning away from these divine mandates. With each ancient statute, we uncover the Israelites' urgent need to distinguish themselves from their neighbors, striving for purity in both individual and communal spheres. As we examine the complex relationships of biblical figures like Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, we gain a fresh lens through which to view the moral fabric that was intended to bind a people to their Creator.
Venturing deeper, we tackle the stark warnings that echo through time, urging adherence to a moral code designed to prevent the defilement of the soul and the land. The weight of these divine edicts is palpable as they spell out a clear boundary between sanctity and sin, with consequences just as relevant in our modern era. Our exploration is not just an academic exercise; it's a call to recognize the continuity of God's voice and the boundaries He sets. As we wrap up our discussion on Leviticus 18, we extend an invitation to continue the journey through Scripture with us, ensuring that we approach God's word with the respect and attentiveness it demands, untainted by the distortions of time or the interpretations of man.
How is everyone doing? It is good to be back talking with you. Open your Bible to Leviticus, chapter 18. Go ahead and grab yourself a cup of coffee, cup of tea, glass of water while we get into this lesson. As always, wherever you may be hearing this podcast, give it a like, a comment. Whatever you got to do there to get it, to get it out there and spread the word. Spread the word to your family and friends that there is a brother out here who goes through books of the Bible, verse by verse. The title of today's lesson is laws on immoral relations, leviticus 18. Let's read Leviticus 18.
Speaker 2:The Lord said to Moses Speak to the Israelites and say to them I am the Lord, your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices. You must obey my laws and be careful to follow my decrees. I am the Lord, your God. Keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them. I am the Lord. No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the Lord.
Speaker 2:Do not dishonor your father by having sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother. Do not have relations with her. Do not have sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother. Do not have relations with her. Do not have sexual relations with your father's wife. That would dishonor your father. Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere. Do not have sexual relations with your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter. That would dishonor you. Do not have sexual relations with the daughter of your father's wife Born to your father. She is your sister. Do not have sexual relations with your father's sister. She is your father's close relative. Do not have sexual relations with your mother's sister because she is your mother's close relative. Do not dishonor your father's brother by approaching is your mother's close relative. Do not dishonor your father's brother by approaching his wife to have sexual relations. She is your aunt. Do not have sexual relations with your daughter-in-law. She is your son's wife. Do not have relations with her. Do not have sexual relations with your brother's wife. That would dishonor your brother.
Speaker 2:Do not have sexual relations with both a woman and her daughter. Do not have sexual relations with either her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter. They are her close relatives. That is wickedness. Do not take your wife's sister as a rival wife and have sexual relations with her while your wife is living. Do not approach a woman to have sexual relations during the uncleanness of her monthly period.
Speaker 2:Do not have sexual relations with your neighbor's wife and defile yourself with her. Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Moloch, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman. That is detestable. Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it. That is a perversion.
Speaker 2:Do not defy yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled, so I punished it for its sin and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things, For all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled, and if you defile the land, it will vomit you out, as it vomited out the nations that were before you. Everyone who does any of these detestable things, such persons, must be cut off from their people. Keep my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the lord, your god all right now.
Speaker 1:The last time we were together we looked at the blood of atonement. Today we are looking at immoral relation laws. Now, in this chapter, we will learn that there are things that happened back in genesis and in egypt that the lord calls israel to put a stop to. We will break this chapter down in three parts. All right. Part number one the people are to obey what the lord says regarding sexuality. We see this in verses one through five, leviticus 18, verses 1 through 5.
Speaker 1:Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying speak to the sons of Israel and say to them I am the Lord, your God. You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt, where you live, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You are to perform my judgments and keep my statutes, to live in accord with them. I am the Lord, your God. So you shall keep my statutes and my judgments, by which a man may live if he does them. I am the Lord. God wanted Israel to not part, excuse me. God wanted Israel to not be a part of what everyone else in the world was doing to set, you know, them apart from everyone else, and that was really the whole reason that the Lord brought Israel into resistance, into existence, is that he wanted them to be a set apart, people, or people that others looked at and said there's God over there. God is dealing with those people, so he is calling them to be away from these things that others were doing.
Speaker 1:Part number two in this section we will look at 18 things abominable to the Lord. You will notice the term uncovered, the nakedness, in all these verses. Now the term in hebrew is uncovered. Hebrew 1540, galah means to uncover or remove the word nakedness. Hebrew 6172, erva means nudity, shame and proper behavior. Now, in hebrew, this is and you, this is a euphemism a mild or indirect word or experience substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing. When they use this term, it meant sexual relations. So I went through all, went through all that for you to understand what is going on. And when you hear those words uncover that nakedness you know what they're talking about. Okay, I told you was. We broke this down to 18 parts. Let's get into it.
Speaker 1:Number one you could not have sex with a blood relative. Notice verse six none of you shall approach any blood relative of his to uncover nakedness. I am the lord. Now remember. This is some 1500 years or so after the things that were happening back in genesis. I'm talking adam and eve, who were the first man and women woman into the world. We know how they had to procreate to get to where we got in the flood and then, after the flood, where you have noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives, that's eight people. We know what had to happen for the world to repopulate. So this was not referring back to that time, this is referring from now on out.
Speaker 1:You shall not have sex with a blood relative. Number two you could not have sex with your own mother. Notice verse seven you shall not uncover the nakedness of your father. That is the nakedness of your mother. She is your mother. You are not to uncover her nakedness now, in the time we live in. Of course we see this as very gross. At least most of us will. But this was something that had to be told to them back then, because other nations were doing this.
Speaker 1:Number three you could not have sex with your stepmother. Verse eight you should not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife. It is your father's nakedness. So, no matter how close you were in age, you were not to have sexual relations with your stepmother. That is your father's nakedness. Number four you could not have sex with your sister verse 9 the nakedness of your sister, either your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether born at home or born outside, their nakedness you shall not uncover. Your sister is off limits. Now we know there was a time where sisters were not off limits, but that time has passed and God is telling Israel you are not to have sexual relations with your sister.
Speaker 1:Part five you cannot have sex with your stepsister. Verse nine again whether it's your father's daughter or your mother's daughter, whether born at home or born outside, born at home means that is your quote-unquote full sister. Born outside, that would be your half-sister, meaning that she is the daughter of your father or your mother. Either way, she was off limits. Number six you could not have sex with your granddaughter. Notice verse 10 the nakedness of your son's daughter or your daughter's daughter. Their nakedness you shall not uncover, for their nakedness is yours. This is blood of your blood, your granddaughter. It didn't matter if it was your son's daughter through his wife or your daughter's daughter through her husband. You are not to have sexual relations with your granddaughter.
Speaker 1:Part seven you could not have sex with your stepmother's daughter. Look, notice verse 11 the nakedness of your father's wife's daughter, born to your father. She is your sister. You shall not uncover her nakedness. Notice it says she is your sister. So there was a time where people would take a sister, as long as it was their father's daughter from another woman. But they would not take the daughter of their mother because they saw her as more of a sister. But even if your father remarried after your mother passed and he had a daughter with his new wife, she was off limits.
Speaker 1:Number eight you could not have sex with your aunt. Verses 12 to 13 you shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's sister. She is your father's blood relative. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, for she is your mother's relative, didn't matter which side of the family the aunt was on, she is still your blood relative. Verse 9, excuse me, part 9 you cannot have sex with your uncle's wife. Notice verse 14. You should not uncover the nakedness of your father's brother. You should not approach his wife. She is your aunt.
Speaker 1:See what the lord is showing them is is that, even though we are getting outside of the quote-unquote blood because you could look at it and say, okay, my father's my direct blood. His brother, who's my uncle, is some of my blood. He, he's still my blood, but he's not my father. And this woman who my uncle brought in from outside the family well, you know, you know she's not technically blood of me. It didn't matter, because your uncle is your blood. You were not to have sexual relations with his wife.
Speaker 1:Part 10 you could not have sex with your son's wife. Notice verse 15. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your daughter-in-law. She is your son's wife. You shall not uncover her nakedness. Unfortunately, in some of the times we live in, in the 20th and 20th century, we have read stories of this actually happening. But the lord is putting a stop to that here, telling them this is something that he calls abominable for them to do.
Speaker 1:Number 11 you could not have sex with your brother's wife. Notice verse 16. You should not uncover the nakedness of your brother's wife. It is your brother's nakedness. This would be your sister-in of your brother's wife. It is your brother's nakedness. This would be your sister-in-law, your brother's wife, was also off limits.
Speaker 1:Number 12, you could not have sex. Well, excuse me, you could not have sex with your mother and her, with a mother and her daughter or with her and her granddaughter, so with a mother so I know I kind of read that and jumbled over a little bit with a mother and her daughter or a or her and her granddaughter. See this in verse 17 you should not uncover the nakedness of a woman and of her daughter. Nor shall you take her son's daughter or her daughter's daughter and uncover her nakedness. They are blood relatives. It is lewdness and you guys understand what's going on here. You, you were not to take a woman and her daughter is what it's talking about here. Nor were you to take a woman and her granddaughter. So you had to have, you could have the woman, but you could not have her daughter or and or her granddaughter with her. Sorry, I jumbled over that a little bit. Sometimes I'm looking at my notes, I'm looking down and looking up at my notes and I throw myself off, so I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 1:Number 13 you could not have sex with two sisters or to marry them. Verse 8, notice. Notice verse 18, and you should not marry a woman in addition to her sister as a rival while she is alive, to uncover her nakedness. Okay, now, this has been done previously. If you go back to our lesson on genesis 29, it will remind you on how jacob married and had relations with two sisters. Now, to be fair, jacob was deceived into marrying the two sisters, but it still happened.
Speaker 1:Give you a quick flashback now for those of you who didn't check out my lesson on Genesis 29, go back and check it out. But remember, jacob went back to his mother's land. He hooked up with his uh, with his uncle, laban. He wanted to marry Rachel, but Laban had a plan because he was deceitful and, in the disguise of the dark and Jacob being full of wine, he gave him Leah, the older sister, and then the next morning, when Jacob realized he was deceived, his uncle said well, you can still have the younger sister in exchange for more years. Now the thing about it was that, even though Jacob was deceived, the sisters became rivals with each other. Now, if you go back and read that chapter listen, you know, if you go back and check out my lesson in that and go through the scriptures, you will notice that it wasn't really harmony because the sisters were rivals. They were literally going at each other and having to make deals with each other on a given night for one of them to have Jacob, because he was both of their husbands.
Speaker 1:But I also want you to notice something that it does say here. It says while she is alive to uncover her nakedness, you should not marry a woman in addition to her sister as a rival while she is alive. In other words, let's just be honest with what it's saying here. While your wife is alive, you are not to marry. Just be honest what it's saying here. While your wife is alive, you are not to marry her sister. But it's not saying that if your wife passes, that you can't marry her sister. It's saying that you cannot do that while she's alive because it will make them rivals. But when your wife passes, your wife is in eternity and if she's a believer she's in heaven with the lord. So she has she. It's not really her business on what's going on down here on the earth. Let's just let's move on from that and move on to number 14.
Speaker 1:You could not have sex with a woman during her menstrual cycle. Notice verse 19 also. You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness during her menstrual impurity. Once again, to most of us, and at least I know to myself, that is pretty gross, but there were people who were doing that in that time. Number 15, you could not have sex with your neighbor's wife Notice verse 20, and you shall not have intercourse with your neighbor's wife to be defiled with her. So, yes, your neighbor may not be a blood relative, but he is your neighbor, someone who you look at every day. You are not to go into his wife. Number 16. It was an abomination to sacrifice your children Notice verse 21. Neither shall you give any of your offspring to offer them to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. Now there's a footnote that I want to read pertaining to this verse leviticus 18, verse 21. I'm gonna read a footnote on this.
Speaker 1:One of the darker sides of the religion of some of israel's neighbors when they settled in canaan was human sacrifice. This passage and others Leviticus 20 and 2, also in Deuteronomy 18.10, shows God's total opposition to such a practice. Still, even kings of Judah sacrificed their sons to Molech. The Ammonite national deity was to such a practice. Excuse me, I lost my spot, the Am, the ammonite national deity. We see this in second kings, 16 and 3 and 21 and 6, and the people of judah at one point even built a special high place to use to sacrifice their sons and daughters. We see this in jeremiah 7 and 31 as well.
Speaker 1:All that this was done in worship to foreign gods, which made the sin doubtly evil. The lord's attitude is clear. In the only instance of possible human sacrifice where god was involved abraham's attempted offering of isaac god intervened and stopped the sacrifice. So we know that story where abraham, where god called abraham to take isaac up, but we know why the lord did that, and speaking of which, you can go back into my lesson on that and you can get it now. The reason for this is is because they are in the land of canaan and a lot of this is going on. So you got to remember something people, brothers and sisters of god, this was not only true with the israelites, but this is true with us as well.
Speaker 1:When you are around, corrupt people, corrupt people can rub off on you. We have this thing where we talk about our light and that somehow our light can shine on others, and I'm not saying that it can't. But just like what the Lord told Solomon, they won't worship your God, you'll end up worshiping their God. That's what happens when we're around immoral and corrupt people. Some of their practices can and sometimes they do rub off on us. So it is best to stay away from that or keep your eyes pointed on the Lord, as he told the people here, because you will end up doing some of that. Now they know that sacrificing their children was wrong. But if you're around that enough at some point you may be tempted to give in and say, hey, this thing seems to work for them. Maybe we'll give it a try. Ok, moving on, number 17,.
Speaker 1:You could not have sex with a member of the same sex. Notice verse 22. You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination. Listen, there are those who will say there's nowhere in scripture that talks about sexual relations with the same sex. Leviticus 18, 22. Remember that now you can give them the whole thing in context so they'll know that this is talking about sexual relations. But the Lord is very clear you do not lie with a man in the way that you lie with a woman. You do not uncover a man's nakedness Number 18, you could not have sex with an animal Verse 23. Number 18, you could not have sex with an animal Verse 23. Also, you should not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is a perversion. Why did the Lord say this? Because people, it's obvious that this thing was happening over where they were and he did not want his people being involved in such a grotesque activity.
Speaker 1:Now we move on to part three. God gives a warning about any participation of these things. We see this in verses 24 through 30. Do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these, the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. Remember what I said a little bit ago the Lord is telling them these nations have done these things Verse 25. For the land has become defiled. Remember what I said a little bit ago the lord is telling them these nations have done these things verse 25 for the land has become defiled. Therefore, I have visited its punishment upon it. So the land has spewed out its inhabitants.
Speaker 1:But as for you, you are to keep my statutes and my judgments and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native nor the alien who sojourns with you, not only the, the Israelites, but the people who were with them Verse 27, for the men of the land who have been before you have done all these abominations, and the land has become defiled Once again. They have done all of these things Verse 28, so that the land may not spew you out, should you defile it, as it has spewed out the nation which has been before it. For whoever does any of these abominations, those persons who do shall be cut off from amongst their people. That's a warning you will be cut off from your people. Verse 30. Thus you are to keep my charge that you do not practice any of the abominable customs which have been practiced before you, in other words, before their eyes, so as not to defile yourselves with them. I am the lord your god. And at the end of that chapter and end of that verse, our lord makes it very clear who is speaking and who is saying that these things are abomination. I am the lord your god. This did not come from men, this came from the lord himself. So the people had to realize that if they cross this line, the lord, god. The lord, our god, gave these charges and they are going strictly against what he said. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of leviticus, chapter 18. Now, that was a very interesting chapter and there have been some controversial things in there, but the lord said it, so we will follow it once again.
Speaker 1:Wherever you hear this podcast, spread the word. There's a brother out here who goes through books of the bible verse by verse. As I always say, the only way to get god's word direct is to go verse by verse. We don't want to skip a single verse in this book. That way, we get everything in this context and men cannot deceive you into something that is wrong. I appreciate you all very much. I have kept you all in my prayers and I would like you to do the same for me. If the Lord tarries, we will get to the end of this book as long, and by book I mean the whole Bible, along with other little lessons along the way. That's all for now. God bless, thank you, thanks, thank you, you.